parenthetical
by Archedes
Summary: But what Aqua also knew (she tightened the knots so the star was taught and sturdy and like hers and Ven's before, she placed it to her lips and whispered a small spell of protection over the painted orange petals) was that these wayfinders would bring them together again, no matter what.


**parenthetical**

Aqua defined her life through firsts, and the gut reactions those firsts brought out from her. The first time she summoned her keyblade, the first time she spoke to Terra, the first time Eraqus had looked at her with something regretful in his eyes and a slump like disappointment to his shoulders as he shook his head and walked away without wishing her a good-night: each time, she had cried—alone in her room, of course, because she was a girl and she was expected to be weak and frail and the last thing she ever wanted was to prove them right by wiping the tears from her cheeks in the main hall as her master left and Terra stood awkwardly to the side, always unsure of what to say because Aqua didn't make mistakes and Aqua didn't get reprimanded and Aqua didn't cry. Aqua was the studious one. The serious one. The responsible one. She clung to these words desperately, held them tight to her chest because they were noble things that were not weak or frail.

She had been the first to train under Eraqus: Terra had come later and Ventus later still. Terra summoned his keyblade after two months of training, and stacked against Aqua's solid six with no foreseeable progress, she soon grew desperate and uncertain and would she be dismissed from Eraqus's tutelage if she never managed to summon the one thing that made them different from the rough-hewn warriors that made axes from mountain boulders and swords from veins of iron as thick as river gorges. The relief, the raw, pulsing happiness overwhelmed her, and the night she had finally done it, she retreated to her room and sobbed into her pillow until she couldn't breathe. Training under a keyblade master was an _honor_, and she knew the weight of it well—she knew the bruises of her knees and the old white scars of her arms and the violent red marks of her back that reminded her of the _honor_ of her training even when the stiff angry aches of her muscles did not. Eventually she stopped bruising, eventually she got used to the knocks from the teeth of the wooden keyblade that were her punishment for being too slow, too inattentive, too inadequate because her foes would not hold back, would not hesitate in devouring her whole and seizing her heart from the warm socket of her chest.

The first words Terra ever spoke to her (the words she carved into the inside of her skull with a rusty pocket knife, the words she sometimes remembered, unbidden, on rainy days when the ground was slick and misted and she looked at Terra and wondered how much of that arrogant and outspoken child was left in him) were a sharp blade, an open, wondering question of what the master could possibly see in a _girl_, and shouldn't she be baking cakes and mending clothes and why was this boy able to so easily tear her down and make her feel shame for doing the idle things she enjoyed? Those little barbed comments, the little half-meant absentminded things that made up in childish ignorance what they lacked in cold spite, became a sort of fascination of Terra's that Aqua came to accept and, later, shuck off the curve of her shoulders like rainwater. They had sparred, then, and when Aqua had soundly defeated him he claimed she wasn't really a girl at all, and in a way that was so much worse because she could not be both a _master_ and a _girl_ but instead she must forfeit one to keep the other. She curled up on the floor of her room that time, staring listlessly into the darkness beneath her bed where she saw old forgotten books and socks through the haze of tears. It shook her, being so easily dismissed by a boy three months older and three inches taller who had only just arrived.

She forgave him, though, because while Terra was many things, he was never malicious. He would stop if she asked, but that would mean acknowledging an offense that she was not certain was an offense at all—she was a _girl_, and she was a _warrior_, and she was both at once and both separately. She defined her life through firsts and her reactions to the firsts, and she would never forget that she cried the day a little boy had called her a _girl_ like it was the worst thing in the world to be. So she baked cakes and she mended clothes and she held her head high and did not shy from Terra's little half-meant, absentminded things that he spoke without thinking. Eraqus's first pupil: the studious one, the serious one, the responsible one was also a _girl_ as well as a _warrior_, and she would not be ashamed of being either.

The day she had first disappointed her master had been one locked forever deep within her heart—a bitter memory that resurfaced (clawed up from the depths like a rabid animal dripping gore from its jaws) whenever she was partnered with Terra or Ventus for an assignment, something that haunted her and seeped into her fingers, causing them to quiver and grip tighter at the hilt of her keyblade. She and Terra had once been sent deep into the mountains to retrieve a special ingredient for the master (they were not told what it was or what it was for), and where there might have been darkness—ten years into the future when the Land had become a Castle and the shadows had a shape that was black and cancerous—instead there were indigenous creatures that were monstrous in their own ways. Towering, lumbering things with claws and eyeless faces that yawned jagged teeth and deep bellows that echoed for miles, sending birds and small woodland animals scattering about the earth and sky. They had been told that if they were charged by such a beast, they were to slay it quickly and without hesitation and to move from the area before more were drawn to them.

The mountainsides were blanketed in sprawling forests that spider-webbed around vast clearings and quarries—the ground was rugged and craggy, and it took the two an hour alone to even reach the base of one of the mountains, where an old dirt path trodden down by horse hooves peeked out between the foliage and spiraled up the incline, snaking around tree trunks and massive, scarred boulders. Terra was at ease, for the journey thus far had been relatively quiet, and the few creatures they had encountered had been avoided without difficulty. He laughed and joked and though he was not particularly witty, Aqua laughed anyway, though by contrast she was nervous, for they had seen few birds and even fewer deer in some time, and she could not shake the ominous sense of foreboding that gripped her cold and tight. The closer they traveled to where Eraqus told them his ingredient would be, the quieter their surroundings grew until not even the early-risen crickets could be heard from the shrubbery.

They emerged into a clearing, and there they were greeted by the hulking, shuddering back of one of those monstrous things. It was preoccupied—eating some poor animal it had caught, and Aqua could hear the crunching of bone and she could smell the fetid, torn organs. She felt sick almost immediately and gagged into the back of her hand, the choked sounds muffled by the fabric of her sleeve. Terra grimaced and, with a brief touch to her upper arm, led her along the treeline, walking with the silence of one well trained. Halfway across—Aqua's arms at her sides, having regained control of her roiling, queasy stomach—the thing froze and breathed in loudly—Aqua could hear the air rushing into its lungs, its chest expanding, ragged ears twitching atop its awful, elongated head. That was all the warning they were given.

With a bellow it charged, kicking up clumps of the hard earth with its impossibly large claws as it kicked off, bloodied teeth bared as it blindly ran towards them. Perfectly in sync—for the two of them had been together for several years now—Terra and Aqua dodged to either side. Terra landed a slash on the side of its shaggy neck, drawing its attention to him and leaving its back open to Aqua, who readied her keyblade and tensed her legs and prepared to end it in one clean blow—

The air caught hot and dry in her lungs and her throat closed up, and she saw the beast lumbering towards Terra, backing him into the trees where he would not be able to fend off its gaping maw, being so boxed in by the forest around him. She saw these things, and she was seized by a cold terror that froze up her muscles and her mind and she knew she _must_ act because Terra was getting closer and closer to the trees and the tight-knit trunks would be his end and out of the corner of her eye she could see the mutilated carcass and smell the half-eaten innards and a burning, twisting bile rose up her ragged throat and poured into her mouth. It would kill Terra, rip him apart and shatter his ribcage and open up his stomach so everything would splatter down onto the ground and from here she would be able to see his face wracked with fear and pain (twisted and wrinkled, his lips curling up eyes squeezing shut before going slack as the life seeped out of him through him down down onto the ground where the blood would gather and soak into the earth) and then it would turn on her and do the same and she—

There was a cry, the sound of bone on hastily-summoned half-formed armor and Terra's body was sent crashing to the side, and he rolled twice before he slammed into the base of a tree, barely conscious and two arms wrapped around his torn abdomen where everything was pouring out—

Her lungs opened, and Aqua could breathe, and everything seemed to happen at once—she brandished her blade and rushed forward (she saw nothing and felt nothing and thought nothing and her body seemed to move of its own accord because before her she saw the life twisting seeping dripping dropping out where the blood gathered and soaked into the earth), taking the creature from the side in a rough right angle where it sightlessly groped for Terra's crumpled moaning body, and she stabbed blindly, buried the teeth into its neck and whispered a prayer, and there jagged shards of ice exploded along the blade. The blood was warm and it sprayed out in a sick gurgle, and the monster careened to the side, thrashing wildly as Aqua was dragged forward, the hilt of the keyblade in a death-grip between her fingers that she couldn't have loosened if she tried. It roared and bellowed and whimpered and every noise was _wet_ and Aqua's stomach turned and turned and dripped and dropped.

By the time it died (the last breath leaving its stained mouth in a ragged sigh that was swallowed by the storm winds of the dark clouds Aqua had not and did not see gathering above them) her arms were stiff and wooden, and it was only because Terra was there on the ground (bleeding bleeding what was his and what was its dripping gathering soaking?) that she forced her hands open, leaving the blade jutting from the creature's grisly neck. She fell to her knees at Terra's side, and she touched his face and whispered his name over and over, voice choked (and strained and broken) though she shed no tears (not yet), until he opened his eyes. She pulled apart his arms, motions rough out of fear and adrenaline and _please, Terra, please you can't—please don't_, away from the wound which, with a flood of relief that she could have drowned in, was shallower than she had thought. She spread her fingers over it, filled the weeping gash with a gentle green light that grew until the red was chased away, leaving nothing more than a torn piece of half-formed armor that hadn't come in time to protect him but had blunted the blow by virtue of things that were not Aqua. Her heart was beating against the inside of her ribcage, pounding fists against the white bone that reminded her how close she had come and her hands shook as she took his face between them and just kissed his forehead and his nose and his cheeks over and over and over, heart pounding fists in her chest and blood soaking through the fabric on her knees.

This was the first time Terra had nearly died, and she felt his hands on her shoulders as he struggled to sit up, and he was speaking to her though it took her a few minutes to really hear him, so consumed was she with her terrible relief. "Aqua—Aqua, hey. Come on. It's all right," his voice was quiet, and he repeated the words again and again until her arms stopped shaking and she felt he would not disappear if she stopped touching him.

She felt tired. "We…we have to go," she finally managed to say, absently stroking Terra's cheek because he was beautiful and alive and if he had died it would have been her fault, all her fault—"We have to go. Before more of them come."

"Yeah."

He was unsteady on his feet, at first, but he was determined (she was disheartened). She helped him walk, insisted on it so he could not argue when she pulled his arm across her shoulders and half dragged him forward, away from the beast and up towards the summit. She dismissed her keyblade from its neck as an afterthought, and she did it without looking back because she was covered in blood (it was on her knees in her hair on her face in her nose on her hand where she held Terra's hip and bore him along the horse trodden path) and she felt certain she would vomit if she did. In the distance, they heard bellowing, and she felt Terra shiver unconsciously against her side, and she held him tighter, felt his hair brush against hers as they ducked their heads close against the wind and walk-limped toward the peak.

"…I'm so sorry, Terra," the words fell out against her will, and she grit her teeth against the tears and focused only on the rocky path before her. He was silent for several minutes.

"It's all right. You were scared, but you pulled through. That's all that matters." She could have recited the words along with him: they were so painfully Terra.

"Terra, you would have _died_ because of me."

"Yeah, probably."

She was angry—mostly at herself, for failing to be the serious studious responsible one when it mattered the very most—and she was angry at Terra for not hating her. It would be so much easier if he yelled, told her how useless she was and how she would get them all killed one day and how she would never be a master, was never cut out to be a master, should have never trained to become a master at all. Go back home, girl, and get a husband and make him cakes and darn his socks and maybe then you won't kill the ones who matter most. But that was not Terra—that was not the Terra who said absentminded, half-meant things that hurt her because she let them and not because he wanted them to, who would never intentionally put his friends in harm's way, who would never hate her for making a mistake even if he suffered for it. "You just don't get it, do you?" she demanded, and the tears were so close to spilling over, and she clung to her anger as a means of staving them off, steeled herself against them with the hard line of her jaw. "I almost got you killed. _I_ almost got you _killed_, Terra. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" Her voice cracked then, and she was filled with a shame that was warm and sticky—sickly and viscous and it clung to her like rot and reminded her of the time she had gotten the flu and it had stuck in her throat and burned her alive.

Aqua could feel him looking at her, head turned, nose a few inches from the side of her face. She couldn't bear to meet his eyes. "But I didn't. You know, I don't think I've ever seen you this shaken up before." She glanced at him, quick enough to see the audacity with which he grinned—a boy who hadn't almost been torn apart from stem to stern by a mindless monster of an animal.

She said nothing. A grotesque heaviness had settled in the pit of her stomach since she had healed him, and it was a tight knot of stress and worry and shame that was making her sick in the absence of the blood and gore of the clearing. The incline of the path flattened into a plateau, and off to the side was a weathered niche bored into the rock by years of harsh winds. She brought Terra there, sat him down against the mountainside where she knelt beside him, hands clenched on her knees as she surveyed his wound once more. The spell had healed him completely, and she knew this, but she couldn't shake the image from her mind in which she was forced to watch everything pour out of him and onto the ground and his face wracked and twisted with—

"Aqua." She tore herself away from his abdomen, up to his face where she read the concern in the creases of his eyes. "Don't start doubting yourself because of this. You have to be confident in the knowledge that you're here for a reason. That Master Eraqus picked you for a reason. And that's because you can do this. You choked, but you pulled through. That shows you can move past this. You know that."

"What if I keep choking?" Aqua defined her life through firsts and her first reactions, and how could she go on if every time Terra or Ventus were in trouble, she was frozen by the thought of their deaths. She could never forgive herself if she let them die. Terra's trust in her shamed her—he had been confident she would strike the creature down, but she had failed him and Terra was left to pay the price for her hesitation. This was not the same as when they trained with their wooden blades. That was not a bruise from blunted teeth that Terra had sustained.

"You won't." His conviction disarmed her, and she shifted to sit next to him, her back to the stone and her eyes cast out over the lip of the mountain path where the sky dropped down to the tips of the trees. She felt like she should want to cry now, but exhaustion—physical and emotional—weighed her down, and she no longer had the energy to feel very much at all. So she sighed and leaned back, resting her head against the rough rock behind her. Something nudged against her hand before warm fingers laced through hers, and they gave her a comforting squeeze. For awhile they simply sat there, and above their heads dark storm clouds were pushed around on the wind. If it rained (Aqua prayed it didn't), she didn't know if she would have the energy to move. It felt like a year had passed since she and Terra had first set off into the woods. Time had slowed, and she sat there on the mountain, stroking the back of Terra's hand with her thumb as a black sky churned above their little niche in the weathered stone.

She awoke to the sound of her name, unaware that she had fallen asleep. It was raining lightly, and for several minutes she wondered—bleary-eyed and groggy and half-conscious—why it was raining in her room and why Terra was snoring in her ear, his face buried in her hair and his arms wrapped around her where she sat half in his lap. Everything came back to her slowly, blood struggling through a clotted artery—the assignment, the ingredient, the monster, Terra's blood dripping gathering on the ground where it soaked into the soil and stained the grass red—

"Aqua! Terra!" The voice again, closer this time. She could now hear another—younger and high-pitched. The master and Ven. It had to be.

She slipped out of Terra's arms, scrambled to her feet (and she noticed how the knees of her socks and the front of her shirt were dotted with thick, wide splotches of blood that had already dried and darkened to a rusty brown), and cupped her hands to her mouth. "Master! Ven!" They couldn't be far. They must have been coming up the path at that very moment. Behind her, Terra stirred, winced, put a hand to his stomach where the wound had been and where the flesh ached from her magic. Healing was tricky on a good day, but Aqua had been half-crazed with panic and worry when she had mended him. But her mind was on far too many things for her to feel guilty for having been rough with her spell.

Eraqus and Ventus found them before long—Ventus's face had been a deathly white, having seen the corpse of the monster Aqua had killed and the blood littering the disfigured clearing that matched what was covering his two lost-and-found friends. Aqua was too exhausted to offer him any comforting words, and instead the two of them hoisted Terra between them. Terra could only smile in embarrassment as Eraqus checked him over, nodding to himself before instructing them to return to the castle immediately; he would retrieve the ingredient himself, which laid farther up the mountain. The master's voice had been tight: disappointed, Aqua figured, that his two eldest pupils had been unable to complete their assignment. He knew (as Aqua and Terra knew) that this was nothing above their skill level; had Aqua not faltered, they would have returned home long ago.

The woods were silent as the three traversed them. They encountered no monsters, and the greatest peril they faced was when Ventus slipped on the slick grass and dragged all three of them down. He had only laughed, face and hair caked with mud, caught halfway between apologetic and brazenly amused. By the time they returned to the castle, the sky had opened up and it had begun to pour. They stumbled into the main hall, soaked to the bone and dripping dirty water down onto the marble floor. They were not left waiting long, however; Eraqus arrived shortly after, his clothes mysteriously dry. Aqua could see the curiosity on Ven's face, but when he opened his mouth to ask he was silenced by a look from the master who dismissed him from the room.

Ventus was reluctant—glanced to Terra and Aqua with some expression that seemed both concerned and apprehensive—before trudging away, leaving muddy footprints in his wake. Eraqus merely looked at them for a time, and they straightened unconsciously under his austere gaze, and Aqua was again assaulted by the sheer ferocity of her own shame and guilt. "What happened?" the master finally asked, his tone measured and even as he looked between them. Terra spoke before she could even begin to think of the right words to explain what she had done, what she had almost allowed to happen.

"I was careless, master. I allowed myself to be cornered by one of the monsters, and I was injured because of it." He was lying for her, and she felt an immense hollowing in her chest. It was all she could do to refrain from clutching at the fabric of her shirt—it suddenly seemed far too tight. "Aqua saved me. She defeated the creature herself."

Eraqus must have seen the conflicted expression on her face, for he then asked: "Is that so, Aqua?"

From the corner of her eye, she could see Terra staring straight ahead, arms rigid at his sides as he stood straight. He was lying to their master, a man they both respected above all, to protect her, and it tore up her insides, clutched her heart in its bitter claws and constricted her lungs. There were simply no words—and if there were, she did not know them—to describe how she felt, standing there in that moment with Terra at her side and her master patiently waiting for her affirmation. "Master…no. It isn't. It…it was my fault Terra was hurt. I hesitated. I could have struck the thing down before it ever touched him, but I panicked." She could not let him do that for her, and she purposely avoided his eyes as he looked to her suddenly, frowning.

"Very well." The master's face was very carefully composed—whatever he thought or whatever he felt, Aqua did not know. "You two are dismissed. Get some rest. Aqua, you will be on cleaning duty tomorrow, after which you will report to me for additional lessons."

"Yes, sir," she answered on reflex. Eraqus's "punishments" were never extreme—at their very worst, they were tedious, and the greatest risk one faced was falling asleep. It was the disappointment that they feared—the same disappointment with which he was looking at her now. Without another word, he turned and left, hands tucked into his sleeves. He hadn't even said good-night.

The two of them stood there in silence for several excruciating minutes. Aqua's hands were balled into fists at her sides, and she exhaled heavily, feeling the last vestiges of energy leave her. She wanted to sleep—preferably for the next ten years, long enough for Eraqus to forget how she had nearly killed his favorite student. Her best friend. She knew it was childish of her to agonize over it as she was, but she would allow herself this one night. Tomorrow, she would face Eraqus and her punishment without fear that her knees would give beneath her. "…I guess we should go find Ven. He's probably worried," were the words Terra finally came up with, and he turned awkwardly to face her. He was waiting to see how she would react, she realized at once, though she was too tired to feel any particular way about it.

"Why did you lie to the master?" she asked instead, meeting his eyes without shying away.

Terra just shrugged noncommittally, brushing aside this question as he had done the ones prior, and she knew she would not be able to coax a definitive answer from him. He was a terribly earnest person, though she had learned long ago that there were some things he simply would not explain.

Such as the hand-holding for one. Aqua had never felt the need to restrain herself when it came to showing affection to both Terra and Ven; despite their protests—which, really, were for show and nothing more—she would ruffle their hair, pinch their cheeks, and—much to Ven's horror—wipe stray bits of food off of their faces. She had never considered herself a "maternal" figure, though she supposed she did look after them in a way a mother would. Eraqus was good to them; he was free with his praise and very readily assumed the role of father, especially to Terra. But he was a warrior first, and as such he often overlooked smaller things like paper cuts and unbrushed hair and the inherent restlessness that came with being confined to a life of duty and learning. So Aqua took it upon herself to wash the grass stains from Terra's favorite hakama and to make sure Ven—who had been even more rambunctious when he was younger—didn't forget to wash his hands after using the restroom.

Aqua tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, having little else to add. They merely looked at one another; every so often she glanced away before finally, "I think I'll just…go to bed, actually. Tell Ven I'll talk to him tomorrow, will you?" Without waiting for a response, she walked off. Terra called after her, but she didn't stop until she was in her room, door locked behind her, where she sank to the floor, curled her legs up against her chest, and cried.

Her "punishment" had been to peel potatoes, and as she did so she wondered whether they really needed 500 of them or if Eraqus was at a loss with what to do about her unprecedented blunder. As she worked in the kitchen, Ven occasionally popped in, bright-eyed and curious about the monsters of which he had only seen a single corpse. But that was not something Aqua particularly wanted to discuss, and apparently neither had Terra for Ven announced, "You guys always get to do cool secret stuff without me!" before leaving, unsatisfied.

She didn't see Terra at all until much later, when she was finally returning to her room after several hours of training with Eraqus. She was weary, but she was content as well; the master had forgiven her readily enough, and it was like a great weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. As she turned the corner in the hallway, she saw Terra leaning on the wall beside her door, inspecting the back of his hand with the type of forced concentration that made Aqua suspicious. "Hello Terra," she greeted him with a light smile.

"Hey." He looked up suddenly, as if he hadn't noticed her standing there. This struck Aqua as peculiar. "You seem happier today."

"There's no sense in mourning you while you're still alive, right?"

"Yeah." Then he fell silent, and the two of them stood there awkwardly. Aqua was reminded of the previous day in the main hall, after Eraqus had taken his leave and left them there—she exhausted and he uncertain of how to talk to her.

After several minutes more of uncomfortable silence, Aqua finally prompted him: "Is something wrong, Terra?"

"What…? Ah, no. I guess I just wanted to say thanks…for not letting me die and all." It seemed the ordeal had affected him more than he had let on, and the smile slowly faded from Aqua's face. She had begun to put it behind her already, though only now was Terra dealing with the gravity of what had almost happened to him. She felt embarrassed, slightly ashamed, that he would even thank her for such a thing.

"Don't be silly. I would never let anything happen to you." The words caught in her throat, but she stood behind them. What had _almost_ happened was not what had _happened_, and she would keep saying that to herself until it stopped gnawing at the edges of her mind whenever she had a moment to stop and breathe.

He laughed, but there was very little humor to be found in his face. Mostly, he looked tired. "Getting pinned in the trees like that, though…it wasn't exactly a 'master' tactic, was it?"

She smiled again, far more kindly this time. "Even masters make mistakes. You know that, and you're much closer to becoming one than Ven or I." If she had been prideful when she had first met Terra, she had long since shed it, replaced it with a stalwart confidence that she would succeed no matter what—a confidence that, she thought briefly, had abandoned her when she had seen Terra on the ground, wounded and helpless. He was the strongest of the three—they all knew that—and to see him so easily tossed aside gave her a new respect for the brutality of the creatures in the mountains (and those beyond whom she had yet to meet) that had, before, troubled her as one would be troubled by a large rat.

Terra didn't answer, and whatever was going through his mind was a mystery to Aqua. She suspected he wouldn't tell her, even if she asked. He nodded absentmindedly. "The same goes for me. I mean, I wouldn't let anything happen to you either. Or Ven."

"I know." That was something that (even at the very end when the darkness was consuming her and she was falling down down into the abyss where the cold hard soil had never once been touched by the light) she believed with all her heart.

She approached her door then, placing a hand on the handle with the intention of turning in for the night, but she paused. Terra was looking straight ahead, lost in thought as his gaze hovered on the golden wainscoting of the wall across from him. "Terra?"

"Hm?" He looked at her, a little surprised to see her standing there, so enveloped in his own fatigued mind that he hadn't noticed her move.

"Don't worry about it." It reminded her of that day in the forest—the day before, but now it felt like several lifetimes past—when he, half-drunk off of adrenaline and the exhilaration of brushing shoulders with death, had tried to comfort her. He smiled slightly.

Gingerly, in the same manner she had cared for Ven when he first arrived, barely conscious and numb to the world around him, she touched his chin, pulled his head down gently so she could press her lips to his. The kiss was brief, innocent, though when she pulled back and opened her door, she noticed a faint blush creeping up beneath the tanned skin of Terra's cheeks. "Goodnight Terra."

"…Goodnight, Aqua."

She left him standing there, shut the door behind her as he brushed his lips with the tips of his fingers, and before long she heard the sound of his footsteps fading down the hall. Once he had gone, she sighed, turned to her desk and picked up the small, half-finished charm that lay there. It was a wayfinder, or so the book she had borrowed from the castle library told her. She had already made one for herself—a lumpy, misshapen blue star that had served as her practice and from which she was able to make better ones for her friends. It hung from the knob of her wardrobe, beside the green one she had already made for Ven. Ven's was much better by comparison, but she had grown to like the cracks and flaws of her first wayfinder—enough that she felt no desire to make a new one for herself.

Terra's was the last, and she handled it tenderly, touching the ends of the unwoven string where she had yet to add the final point. She thought about becoming a master and the exam that was quickly approaching. Terra would pass, and she knew this as surely as she felt the final point in her hand. She fed the string through the holes of the piece, carefully, carefully. They would both pass, and with fledgling masters to defend the worlds, there was no telling where their new journey would bring them. But what Aqua also knew (she tightened the knots so the star was taught and sturdy and like hers and Ven's before, she placed it to her lips and whispered a small spell of protection over the painted orange petals) was that these wayfinders would bring them together again, no matter what. It was a childish thing to think—she knew it—and yet she could not help but believe it.

She hung it between hers and Ven's, and the three of them twinkled in the light as they swayed on their leather straps.

19


End file.
